To the extent that most people today are aware of Newton Minow, who died last month at age 97, it’s probably as the answer to a trivia question:
Which Kennedy-era presidential aide referred to TV programing as a “vast wasteland”?
In today’s 500-channel world, Minow certainly got what he wanted when he told TV broadcasters in 1961 that they needed to offer viewers “a wider range of choices, more diversity, more alternatives.”
Not all are good programs, certainly – although Minow also deserves lasting credit for following up his critique by helping steer resources to create more educational-TV stations, a group that later joined to become PBS. Along the way, as an executive for what was then called National Educational Television, he helped secure funding for “Sesame Street.”
Yet the Illinoisan’s lasting impact on society goes beyond Big Bird and a sound bite castigating TV executives.
If you’ve used a cellphone, watched a news program broadcasting live from overseas or used GPS navigation, it’s because of advancements pushed by Minow during his term as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
In a retrospective last year, Minow wrote that he was almost completely ignorant of satellites’ potential for mass telecommunication when he assumed the FCC chairmanship in spring 1961:
“Today we take it for granted that we can watch world events from royal weddings to the Olympic games to the Oscars in real time, but that was a long way off in 1961. As Commissioner (T.A.M.) Craven explained to me what the satellite could do, it seemed like something out of Flash Gordon. And yet, we did not imagine a fraction of the changes that launch would bring.”
But Minow quickly got himself up to speed, ultimately advocating for the creation of the Communications Satellite Corp. to oversee satellites launched for the purpose of better broadcasting and messaging. It took an act of Congress to get that off the ground, which involved a year-long struggle on Capitol Hill to convince skeptical lawmakers.
The orbit of the first Telstar satellite in 1962 was marked by the broadcast of a few, shaky images routed from a transmitter in Maine to a French telecommunications center showing President John F. Kennedy, the singer Yves Montand and clips of sporting events, among other images. But what a beginning to the era of today’s endlessly streaming image.
When JFK signed the Communications Satellite Act on Aug. 21, 1962, he said this:
“Better and less expensive communications, like better and less expensive transportation, are elements vital in the march of civilization. This legislation will, by advancing the peaceful and productive use of space, help to accelerate that march.”
Minow put it more succinctly while garnering the president’s support. He told Kennedy satellites would perhaps be more important than launching humans into space, “because they will launch ideas, and ideas last longer than men and women.”
There’s another, far-reaching but lesser-known aspect to the legislation – one that accelerated the march toward equality.
The bill ran into trouble when it was being considered by the Senate when a group of left-leaning senators launched a filibuster, arguing the proposal for the federal government’s first official public-private partnership amounted to a giveaway to corporations. They wanted full government ownership of the satellites.
Their filibuster cribbed tactics used by Southern, segregationist senators who’d tried to delay civil rights advances in 1957 and 1960. It was a model they’d followed because they’d seen how well it’d worked. (The 1960 measure was essentially gutted so Southerners would halt their delays.)
Another Illinoisan, U.S. Sen. Everett Dirksen, helped gather a bipartisan group of senators to break the filibuster and pass the satellite bill. It was the first time a filibuster had been forcibly ended since 1927, providing a road map for the same kind of bipartisan tactics two years later to end a filibuster and pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
It’s fitting, then, that in his later years, at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin, Minow played a role in encouraging and mentoring a young summer associate to get his start in politics, someone who credited that act with helping ensure equal opportunity for his entire family: Barack Obama.
• Chris Kaergard, a political journalist for 17 years, serves as historian at The Dirksen Congressional Center in downstate Pekin.